In six years, Labor has shown their environmental promises to be hollow. But the Coalition is even worse. Only the Greens will stand up for our environment and our future, writes Christine Milne.

THE CLIMATE COMMISSION recently warned that if we are to retain a reasonable chance of constraining global warming to two degrees Celsius, which is still a dangerously high temperature increase, then globally we can emit no more than 1,000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between 2000 and 2050.

That might seem like a big number, but consider that we are 13 years into that period, which is 26 per cent of the time, but we have already used up nearly 40 per cent of that emission 'budget'.

If we continue at this rate — and that seems pretty certain until at least 2020 — then our allowable emissions budget will have been used up completely by 2028.

Given that the process of reducing emissions, including improving energy efficiency, building renewable energy capacity and sequestering carbon into the landscape takes years to roll out, the window of opportunity to constrain global warming to two degrees is tiny and vanishing fast.

That's why the Greens say we are in a climate change emergency and we have to act now.

The cheapest way to reduce emission is to price carbon. That is why as part of the agreement to support Labor after the last election, the Greens required the establishment of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, which included independent experts, to design the emissions trading scheme and roll out billions of dollars to support renewable energy.

These policies are working well. Greenhouse gas emission have fallen by eight per cent, renewable energy has grown strongly and the economy has continued to grow as expected.

Greens maintaining balance of power in the Senate is essential to stop Mr Abbott dismantling these policies if he wins the election on Saturday. We will also drive other desperately needed global warming plans like more funding for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and a plan to connect our renewable energy hotspots with the electricity grid. The Greens plans will put downward pressure on energy bills and give a huge boost to local jobs.

Moving to emissions trading one year early is politically motivated. The Prime Minister simply wanted to be able to argue that he ended the carbon tax.

This was a political fix for the Labor party. There was no good policy rationale for the move. Big polluters are the main beneficiaries and the cost is largely paid by cutting over $700 million from programs that support the bush; initiatives to help farmers and manufacturers to reduce emissions and biodiversity conservation.

And these cuts come on top of nearly $900 million worth of cuts to programs supporting biodiversity conservation and renewable energy in the May budget. This includes $470 million slashed from the Biodiversity Fund, denying communities across Australia critical funding needed to help regenerate our landscape and provide conservation corridors for our native plants and animals.

Under the old parties, our environment is under attack like never before: Tasmania's incredible Tarkine forest is to be mined, our national parks face logging, grazing and shooting, and our Great Barrier Reef is becoming a highway for coal and gas shipping. Even our beloved koala and Tasmanian devil are facing extinction.

In six years of government, Labor has approved every coal and coal seam gas project, and they have failed to press pause on huge industrial port developments in the Great Barrier Reef despite the World Heritage Committee's significant concerns — Labor simply cannot be trusted to stand up for our environment.

As bad as Labor has become on the environment, the Coalition is even worse.

Abbott has no rational argument to support his plan to repeal carbon pricing and policies to support renewable energy. It is simply the position of a man who distrusts both scientists and economists.

He has said he thinks climate change is "crap" and he dismisses orthodox economic views about how best to tackle the global warming emergency. For example in 2011 he conceded that most economists think a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme the best way to go, but said "maybe that's a comment on the quality of our economists rather than on the merits of the argument". No it isn't.

Tony Abbott has made outrageous statements about carbon pricing, saying it would wipe Whyalla off the map, close down Gladstone and that "there's not a state and there's hardly a region in this country that wouldn't have major communities devastated by a carbon tax if this goes ahead." He has been proved completely wrong, yet still he persists with the absurd so-called Direct Action Plan that not a single Australian economist or industry group publicly supports.

Tony Abbott's plans to hand national responsibility for Australia's most environmentally destructive developments to state governments would please big business but spell disaster for our natural environment. The Greens efforts in Parliament to stop such a hand-off of national environment powers were blocked by both Labor and the Coalition.

The Greens will always stand up for the environment. During this election we have announced over $1.1 billion in additional funding for targeted environment protection initiatives. We will continue to work for stronger not weaker environmental laws, for no new coal or coal seam gas, and for no new dredging or dumping in the Great Barrier Reef.

Make no mistake, Australia's unique species and iconic wild places face a dire future under a Coalition government which will see cut-it-down, dig-it-up, ship-it-out conservative state governments in total control of our nation's environment.

Only the Greens are prepared to stand up for our species and places that are too precious to lose. Only the Greens understand that this is the century of the environment, the century in which survival on our planet will be at the core of government as global warming, population increase, habitat loss and food security dominate geopolitics and our future.

Senator Christine Milne is Leader of the Australian Greens

This is one of three policy pitches from the major parties. See also the pitches from Liberal and Labor.

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Comments (13)

misscatherine :

07 Sep 2013 12:35:22pm

This issue is too important to let the big parties have their way, which they certainly will if they have a majority. The Greens have my vote, because it's important they have a strong voice in any government.

Harry :

The problem with the Greens is they might understand some of the environmental stuff reasonably well but when it comes to how to raise the money to pay for it they are still in Kindergarten.

The problem about becoming a 'Green' is that most of us simply can't afford it!

Once the Greens finally work out how to run the Country as well as save the environment people might start to listen in larger numbers. On current polling (and its been pretty consistent of late) the greens are losing support across the Country big time - its not because we don't believe in looking after the environment, its because we need to be able to make enough money to live while we're busy saving it!

Economics 101 ..... you can't do things if you can't pay for them - it would be great if you could but things just don't work that way here ion Planet Earth ...

Shirley Henderson :

06 Sep 2013 6:24:02pm

The thing is the environment has value and the current Governments think they can buy and sell it without paying for it. The environment is not separate from us but we LIVE in it and RELY soley on it for everything to do with our survival. Sell it and its gone. We cannot bring it back no matter how advanced our scientists are at present. The environment is being damaged beyond recovery and that it is too much of a cost. Government seems to think they can balance their books by selling our land and resources to the point of no return. We need the GREENS to bring everything to do with this to everyones attention. Vote GREENS if you want a future for ourselves and our descendants.

Peter of Melbourne :

08 Sep 2013 4:35:33pm

cmon Harry, dont you know it is the Green revolution.

They won one, count them, one seat in the House of Reps. They now have a mandate to destroy our entire economy to suit their loony egotistical ideals, ofcourse they will be vehmently opposed by Palmer's party who hold one more seat in the Senate than they do and want to stripmine our land of everything we hod dear whilst all the while claiming that they should not pay for those resources and we should be glad the mining industry is sending them offshore.

Kelvin11 :

05 Sep 2013 12:24:17pm

"Tony Abbott's plans to hand national responsibility for Australia's most environmentally destructive developments to state governments would please big business but spell disaster for our natural environment".

"The Green/ALP plan to outsource regulation of our carbon policy to the Europeans, whose scheme has failed to deliver any emissions reduction in 7 years would please inner city progressives but spell disaster for our climate"

soulflight :

04 Sep 2013 11:18:15pm

I really hope the greens can stop the coal seam gas christine milne please send me more information on how we can stop this through the senate i dont like labour or liberal im so lost confidence in both parties and ive been a strong labour voter all my life....... but never have i seen how this government is willing to ruin our beautifull country with the fracking and its world wide .. cant the government of Australia see what it is doing in america and why cant they see if they let this go through life as we know it in australia will be lost and steralized for more than 100 years live stock will die, food will be in shortage. and we will become a third world country within 10 years........it will kill so many people and if that happens who will they govern then. I watched a Video through google called gaslands11 by josh fox and what happened in america. and i was in shock for 3 days...... the amout of methane gas and other poisionas gasses been emitted into the air from fracking, i had a terrable realization..... if enough of this gas surrounds the globe .......all we need is a good lightning storm and the air will set on fire.... hence it will suck all the oxygen up and where all gone. now im not a doom and gloom person i am a realist and can see the writing on the wall. no amount of money is going to fix that i would sooner see us in a depression than let this fr4acking go through if the mining companies want to sue australia all we have to do is pay 100 per person in australia and we could pay it off

Andris Heks :

04 Sep 2013 5:30:23pm

Milne's position and the utter hypocracy of Abbot on climate change are spelled out well in this excellent West Australian articlehttp://www.watoday.com.au/comment/coalitions-climate-doublethink-a-brave-call-of-the-toss-20130904-2t4pj.html

colin :

Bulldust :

03 Sep 2013 5:22:54pm

I am all for renewables ... if they can compete. Remove the outrageous subsidies on all sides and lets see how things stack up. Not with rooftop feed-in tariffs at multiples of the retail price (let alone the wholesale price). Renewables simply don't compete let alone provide consistent power necessary to run an advanced economy.

If you are serious about near-zero emission base load generation, then let's get serious about nuclear. Not like we have a shortage of the fuel domestically. Oh but the dangers and pollution, you say...

Well more deaths occur from people dying in windmill maintenance (i.e. falling out of towers) per GWh generated than nuclear. Shall we talk about the pollution associated with REO manufacture in Mongolia? you know, the vital elements for the transformer magnets in the top of those windmills? Clean energy? Not so much...

That's without even getting into the fact that it hasn't warmed significantly for around 15 years despite ever-increasing CO2 emissions. Yes, the fabled IPCC is mulling over how to deal with that for AR5, especially with the spate of papers (peer-reviewed) stating that the sensitivities are over-stated, and natural climate effects under-stated.

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